Salisbury Gives Back – 4 new GIS tools

My students had a great time presenting the tools they created in my GIS Programming class. I want to thank our friends from Esrifor joining us via GoTo Meeting. Their feedback and advice was greatly appreciated.

Not only does this add new tools to fill a specific niche with ArcGIS, it also shows that Arcpy is simple enough quickly create these tools. Further, it shows just how good the Salisbury University Undergraduate Geography students are. Click the links below, and you’ll see the presentations (we are currently putting the code together so people can download it). Stay tuned to see that link.

Join Count Analysis: This tool focuses on the spatial autocorrelation method of join count analysis that evaluates area features with binary variables to determine if the data is random, dispersed or clustered. The tool calculates the expected and observed dissimilar joins, the Z score, and associated p-value. The presenters are Cody Garcia, Kyle Lane, and Alex Nowak.

Quadrat Analysis: This tool focuses on the spatial autocorrelation of point patterns across a landscape. Using points and a grid of quadrats, this tool measures whether a point pattern is random, dispersed, or clustered. The tool calculates the variance to mean ratio, Chi-square value, and associated p-value. In addition, the tool thematically shades the quadrats based on their counts. The presenters are Jeremy Gencavage, Grant Chalfin, and Zach Radziewicz.

Stratified Sampling Tool – This is not a spatial tool, but rather a tool that takes stratified samples and generates point and interval estimates from the stratums. Generating estimates from stratified sampling is a very powerful statistical technique, and provides significant improvements over simple random sampling. The presenters are Bryan VanGiesen and Brian Hiller.

ArcGIS and Google Route Optimization Tool – This tool integrates ArcGIS with the Google Maps API so that users can route the ArcGIS features over a Google network, using the Google Routing Engine. Users can input their own geodatabase feature classes, and the tool returns the Google routes as a geodatabase feature class, along with driving directions. The presenters are Meghan Murphy, Thomas Simpson, and Liam Doherty.